Anyone tried chain drive?

Has anyone here tried chain drive? I think ladder chains would work great for the x axis.

Wouldn't there be too much backlash?

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Experimenting in 3D in New Zealand

This is something I will try out.

If anyone still remembers Darwin, it had a belt tensioner
I plan on doing the same for chain drive.

Ladder chain is good, but not available in do Zealand. Tamiya do chain, as does Vex, not to mention common bicycle chain.

... search with "ball chain" or "chain belt" and the option "All Dates" set - some of the threads are more than 4 years old: [forums.reprap.org]

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Viktor
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Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

I believe there were some Darwins built using chain to drive the four lead screws on Z and they had the problem of gravity causing the chain to deflect downwards which resulted in backlash. The solution that seems obvious is to preload the chain enough that it can not sag but then the load on the motor, bearings and lead screws is so high it does not work. I could see this being a problem even with light weight plastic chain as no matter how tight you get it you always have sag in the middle of the chain.

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There was a guy at "profounddevices.com" that was working on a chain drive device. His site hasn't been updated for a long time. There may still be a photo of his reprap there.

-Phuzzy

what about printed plastic chain?
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5656

If you maximize everything that can be printed, is printed, then it is truly reprap.

My darwin used bike chain for all the axes - it worked well. There was no detectable backlash (I used jockey wheels as the sprockets). It never printed terribly well for other reasons, but the drive system was good enough. I just tensioned the chain a load (over the 40cm long loop, it was very hard to significantly deflect in the middle by hand). I'm considering adding a milling head to it, since it's much much stronger than my prusa2.